My Early Days: Session 0. Summer/Fall 2001

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend and he said there are some people who cannot restore files from the Timemachine. Well, I tried it this morning and my earliest backup was from April 2004. But guess what I have found - a backup of my original CultureWave.com -- Later became Stokemster.com web site.

For the next several posts, I will begin posting copies from the old site.

Session 0, 2001

By a friends suggestion, I bought a 7'0 NEV gun shape thruster board with 3 fixed FCS fins (I did not know what kind I got until 2002). Took this out a few times, I could not paddle well, and it was every scary to the point that I could not paddle in when I was not confident.

Later in September, went to Richard Schmidt in Santa Cruz and took a beginner lesson, and I was able to catch and stand up with a push from an instructor on a 10 ft Doyle foam board. This gave me a confidence that I was using a wrong size board to start with. In fact I was so lucky that I even did a top turn and stayed on the wave face all the way from the 41st to the Shark's Cove, a good 30-40 second ride. This was one of the happiest moment in my surfing memory.